Before the release of the most recent Sigur Ros album, the band put out a lyric video. I’ve been seeing lyric videos made by the artist more and more often, but this was the first that I saw that wasn’t in English. Knowing that Sigur Ros has been known to use made-up words and gibberish in their songs, I tweeted that I can now sing along with the words that have no meaning to me (whether or not they are real words). The thought made me laugh a little, and I thought I might share the giggles.
A friend of mine, Courtney, tweeted back (not giggling):
IF IT MOVES YOU, IT HAS MEANING.
Whoa. Things just got real.
And this has stuck with me.
Meaning-making is an important category for thinking about finding and doing your work in the world, and being moved by something is an indicator that there is meaning behind or within it. If it moves you, it has meaning, and that meaning is connected to something in your life experience. Your work and the ways that you want to bring yourself to the world today have meaning that is similar to meaning you’ve experienced in the past.
Pay attention to what moves you, to the things that impact you the most. All of these things matter. All of these things have meaning for you.
What are the interactions, the messages, the stories, the quotes, the interactions that move you? The more you can understand the things that move you in the present, the more you can create things that move you and others in the future. The more you know what makes you come alive, the more you can lean into it.
Fun fact hunches from a language nerd:
I thought the jibberish sounds suspiciously like Icelandic….an ancient nordic language that has remained the same-ish for a 1000 years and from which my mother’s tongue Swedish evolved – and sure enough, google translate tells me it is about someone’s relationship to an ominous silent iceberg (under the ice there’s lava and rock) that engulfs us in its silence; about burning (in an abstract sense); flames and ashes.
All in all it seems to portray a very mythopoetic sensation of us belonging to the earth itself, the icelandic ‘soil’ a picture for the battle within a soul; of powers beyond intellect and ancient hunts for meaning (btw I believe the masks they wear are old hunting gear, possibly even inuite).
Wow. This is great! I love the linguistic and cultural background. It makes me love the music even more. Thanks Anna!